Urban Lowlands: A History of Neighborhoods, Poverty, and Planning (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226710532)

Interrogates the connections between a city's physical landscape and the poverty and social problems that are often concentrated at its literal lowest points.

In Urban Lowlands, Steven T. Moga looks closely at the Harlem Flats in New York City, Black Bottom in Nashville, Swede Hollow in Saint Paul, and the Flats in Los Angeles, to interrogate the connections between a city's actual landscape and the poverty and social problems that are often concentrated at its literal lowest points. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective on the history of US urban development from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Moga reveals patterns of inequitable land use, economic dispossession, and social discrimination against immigrants and minorities. In attending to the landscapes of neighborhoods typically considered slums, Moga shows how physical and policy-driven containment has shaped the lives of the urban poor, while wealth and access to resources have been historically concentrated in elevated areas--truly "the heights." Moga's innovative framework expands our understanding of how planning and economic segregation alike have molded the American city.


Author: Steven T. Moga
ISBN-10: 022671053X
ISBN-13: 9780226710532
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 09/21/2020
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2021